


Hope

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 18:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's you, he wants to say.  There's you and me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tumblr's Bethyl Week, Day Seven. Prompt: "hope"
> 
> Post Season Four. The gang has escaped Terminus and Beth has reunited with the group.
> 
> * * *

He's leaning against the railing of the porch when she comes up to him. Before that she'd been sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, and before that she'd been helping to string the tin-can barricade around the property. He knows this because he _has_ to know where she is, even if she's got Maggie or Rick or Glenn at her side. Even though she's still wearing his knife strapped to her thigh. She hasn't said much about the time that she was missing, taken –

_\-- she's just gone –_

\--but there's a look in her eye that wasn't there before, a way that she holds her shoulders when she sizes up Abraham and Eugene. He doesn't have to worry; he knows that she can take care of herself. But he keeps track of her anyway, something heavy and sharp in his gut whenever she wanders out of his sight.

When she smiles up at him that feeling stretches and lengthens, uncoils and flutters and comes alive.

She juts her chin at the step before turning her back to him and flopping down on the rickety boards. He does a quick visual check of the perimeter before joining her, side-glancing her so that he can memorize the curl of her hair at the nape of her neck and the shape of her nose and the glint of the sun on the little stud in her ear. He files the image away along with all the others, the ones that he pulls out and rifles through when he's flat on his back and sleep won't come. 

"How are you voting?" she asks.

"Stay." 

She nods, smiles at Judith playing on a blanket in the middle of the field. She'd been pretty quiet all through the discussion, standing next to Maggie with her arms wrapped around her stomach and her hands cupping her elbows. But she studied everyone, cocking her head as she listened and staring each speaker down with her sharp blue eyes. 

"You ain't gonna vote to go," he says when the silence spins out and out.

When she turns to him and nods again, he shakes his head. "Weren't you listenin'? We was at the CDC—"

"I know. And Doctor Jenner said that he lost contact with everyone, there was no one working on a cure—"

"There ain't nothin' out there!"

"Yeah, but Daryl," she says, "there ain't nothin' here, neither."

There's you, he wants to say. There's you and me, and there's the stream where we stopped to soak our feet and you told me about the time Sean held your head underwater and you nearly drowned. There's the meadow where you dropped your first rabbit and the field where we gathered blackberries; there's the old barn with a hundred notches in it from your crossbow training, and the deer blind where we lay on our backs all night watching the stars instead of sleeping. 

There's a funeral parlour.

"We don't know what's out there," he says.

"Then we find out," she says. "Maybe there ain't no government left. Maybe Eugene's delusional, or mistaken, or a liar. I don't know."

"I do," Daryl says darkly.

"But people need a goal, Daryl. We lost our home, we lost people we loved, we all went through hell tryin' to find each other again. And now we need to move forward. _I_ need to move forward. I need--"

_\-- I need a drink –_

"—somethin' to look forward _to_ , you know? Somethin' to work for. There's a whole world out there. If we don't have a goal, we'll just be stuck—"

"Eatin' mud snakes and livin' in a suck ass camp?" Daryl finishes.

"That camp _was_ pretty suck ass," Beth says with a grin. "That tarp leaked… and it reeked! Smelled like dead fish and burnt popcorn."

"You're right," he says. He ducks his head but watches her through his bangs, grins slyly. "The shack was much better. Too bad we burned it down."

"I'm not sorry," she says.

He still remembers how light he felt walking away from the flames, how it felt like he could just take her hand and float out of there. "Me neither."

The next morning, he votes to head to DC.

* * *

There's nothing but empty fields on either side of the road. There's been nothing but empty fields on either side of the road for the past three days. Daryl is getting fucking tired of empty fields. He almost wishes that a walker would show up just so he could have something to look at besides overgrown wheatgrass and the occasional butterfly.

He hitches his crossbow further up his back, studies his feet as they eat up the blacktop. Occasionally he looks up to seek out Beth in the group ahead of him, watches the swing of her ponytail – and the swing of her hips. Still safe. Still here. 

He's counting dividing lines since the last turnoff – seven hundred and twenty three so far – when he realizes Beth has faded back to stroll along beside him. He looks up questioningly, scans the fields and then the rest of the group. No geeks in sight, and everyone is still just plodding along, same as they've been doing for days. Not time to stop for a break yet, and sure as hell not time to start scoping out a shelter for the night.

"What?" he finally asks.

"I thought we could do this together," she says brightly.

She looks pointedly to the sign up ahead, and he puts it together. "Gonna get me a frozen yoghurt, too?"

"That might be a little beyond my abilities," Beth laughs, "but let's just say that Santa has your name on his nice list this year, Mr. Dixon."

He hesitates for a moment, then holds out his hand. He shudders out a breath when she takes it, when she twines her fingers with his like it's easy as breathing because for her it is. And when she squeezes his hand to urge him forward, he squeezes gently back. 

Maybe they don't need fields of blackberries or rolling streams or peanut butter and pig's feet. Maybe they'll make new memories.

_\-- Oh. --_

They cross the border into North Carolina together, though Daryl's not sure his boots ever actually touch the ground.


End file.
